(October 8, 2016 at 9:01 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: I could show you where this goes all the way back to the book of Genesis (when I find the time, since it will take a lengthy post to present the evidence and tie everything in with the bible), although it will probably just be a waste of time, y'all won't be able to say that no one provided any evidence.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of evidence of God would you be willing to accept?
You're right, it would be a waste of time because this sort of thing holds no value as evidence for me either; the human response to prophecies, signs, horoscopes, superstitions etc can all be readily explained by the power of the mind. The human mind is exceptionally good at seeing what it expects to see so if I buy into say the superstition that seeing a black cat crossing my path means bad luck, then if I see a black cat my mind starts to expect bad luck, then it starts to perceive bad luck, noticing things it wouldn't have noticed without that expectation and interpreting things differently in light of that expectation, and since whatever you perceive is your reality, it ultimately creates bad luck... it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same thing with horoscopes... they set up expectations which your mind then fulfils, interpreting what it sees in light of what it expects to see. And because of these psychological processes, vague prophecies are meaningless as predictions. The more vague a prediction is, the easier it is for your mind to perceive it as fulfilled; the more scope it has for interpretation. Conversely, the more specific a prediction is, the less room the mind has for manoeuvre in interpreting it... so the more details, the more constrained the mind is interpreting it as fulfilled... constrained to the one thing that prediction predicted. Which is good for everyone... a specific prediction is testable and people can be sure they have interpreted it correctly. You're pointing to prophecies in the Bible and seem to be saying you think this guy, William Branham is a prophet prophesied in the Bible? Well I think it's a fair bet that one hundred years ago a guy was pointing to the same passages in the Bible and interpreting some other religious figure of the day as the fulfillment of that prophecy... and in a hundred years time another guy will be doing the same, interpreting a different set of facts as fulfillment of the prophecy... millions of potential interpretations as a result of the vagueness and open-endedness of the prophesy. Show me a prophecy with dates and with specific details that only permit one interpretation and I'll treat that as a prediction which can then be tested, but anything other than that... anything more vague and its value as a prediction drops to zero because of the mind's ability to interpret things in light of its expectations... to see what it expects to see.
As to what I would accept as evidence of God. Not much to be honest... I would need to see with my own eyes a miracle that could only be attributed to god, not to man and the power of the mind. And even then I'd be suspicious of my own mental processes unless it was verified by another person... so ultimately if I saw a miracle and said to my mate 'did you see that?' and he said yes... that's when I'd start considering it for real. But I can take this even further... though I doubt I would in practice... that previous step would probably be enough for me... I read about how sailors in the past thought they saw the end of the world - walls of water around their ships - and were understandably terrified. They were in a position where they had a shared vision as it were... they could turn to their mates and say 'did you see that?' and get a yes response but the walls of water were a trick of the light, caused by how light bent or whatever in that part of the world. So even with a shared 'miracle' in sight, there was in that case a rational explanation, even if it would not be known for hundreds of years. But that aside if me and my mate both see a miracle, that would be enough for me to take it seriously.
